Oakland to redeploy 115 officers in response to crime surge

Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 1, 2006

With homicides in Oakland now officially deemed a "crisis" and residents complaining about slow responses to calls for help, Mayor Jerry Brown and Police Chief Wayne Tucker said Wednesday they will immediately redeploy 115 police officers to a new crime suppression unit and step up efforts to recruit more officers.

"Our priority is to keep the city safe and build our community policing effort," Tucker said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, citing a recent spike in violent crime -- including 19 homicides, more than double the number recorded by this time last year -- as well mounting assaults, rampant drug dealing and prostitution. Although Tucker lamented the increase, he noted it follows a nationwide trend.

The announcement the day after City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, addressing the city's Public Safety Committee, called the city's homicide rate a "crisis" and Mayor Jerry Brown promised immediate action to stem what many consider an alarming increase in crime.

While many residents hailed the city's plan to have the new unit up and running as early as Saturday, police union president Bob Valladon said citizens will not necessarily see more officers in their neighborhoods because the crime suppression team will be sent only to those areas where they are needed most.

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"The citizens of Oakland need to look at entire deployment and really understand they're not gaining that many officers and calls for service will continue to go unanswered or be put on hold," he warned.

Tucker conceded that the new team, to be led by Capt. Dave Kozicki, will not result in a flood of officers on the streets. Rather, the officers

-- to be culled from the airport security detail, neighborhood crime reduction teams and desk jobs -- will be assigned to a new East Oakland station to more effectively identify and respond to crime hot spots across the city.

"We're going to prevent crime by taking predators off the street," the chief said. "We will expect nothing less than success and we will be driven by crime data."

At any given time in Oakland, about 38 officers are available to respond to crime in the city of 400,000 residents. That will not change, because the officers assigned to the new team will not be taken from patrol units, Tucker said.

While some residents and city officials have called on Tucker to simply assign more officers to routine patrols throughout the city, Tucker said and the tactic wouldn't be very effective.

"If we were to put more officers on patrol at this time, then we would be responding to crime once it's already happened," he said. "We need to deploy the officers we have in a more efficient manner."

Brown, noting that his own neighborhood north of downtown has recorded seven homicides in two years, said, "We're refocusing our cops to the job of fighting crime. This new unit is all about flexibility. Wherever the crime shows up our cops will show up."

The chief also said the city is redoubling efforts to get more officers on board to make up for its shortfall of about 150 officers. That plan includes expanding the radius in which prospective officers can live, recruiting applicants at colleges and job fairs and using police academies in other cities to train Oakland officers.

Tucker said he is confident the city will have increased its force from 650 officers to the 803 officers promised under Measure Y, an anti-crime parcel tax voters overwhelmingly approved in 2004, on the streets or in the academies by January.

Brown also said he has called on state and county officials to reduce the number of probationers and parolees "dumped" on Oakland and increase the bail requirements for accused criminals. Brown has said between 3,000 and 5,000 parolees live in the city.

Measure Y provided $9.5 million annually to hire more police and $6.4 million annually to fund anti-violence programs. But efforts to hire those officers have been hampered as cities nationwide grapple with a shortage of people willing to be police officers. The problem is exacerbated in Oakland by steep housing prices and intense competition from rival law enforcement agencies and the military.

Of the 115 officers to be assigned to the new unit, 13 will be taken from the security detail at Oakland International Airport. The slack at the airport will be picked up by officers working overtime shifts, but it neither Brown nor Tucker said what that would cost the city.

The remainder of the 115 will be shuffled from nonessential desk jobs, crime reduction teams previously deployed to different neighborhoods and other "non-essential" units within the department, Tucker said.

Airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes said she had not heard of Tucker's plan but said the airport, working with local law agencies and the federal Transportation Safety Administration, would maintain passenger and employee safety. Last year, 14.4 million people traveled through the airport, which has 8,000 employees, Barnes said.

And while some Oakland residents said the city will never truly reduce crime without addressing the social factors that often cause it, others said Tucker's plan can't come soon enough, and they had no problem taking officers out of the airport to make it happen.

"I'm all for moving the officer from the airport to the streets," said Bill Bagnell of East Oakland. "I'm not at all worried about my safety at the airport or on a plane; the probability of something happening there is far less than being a crime victim of some Oakland streets."

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